


What I Thought & What I Said

by ARR0W



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Anger, Heartbreak, Love, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 20:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3088703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARR0W/pseuds/ARR0W
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone is concerned for Adam at home. They each hold their breath a little every time he climbs up the stairs of the trailer, every time Robert Parrish is waiting for him at the door. No one wants to let him go, but it hurts one person more than everyone else to see those bruises on his strange face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What I Thought & What I Said

**Author's Note:**

> * Title from No Light, No Light by Florence + the Machine
> 
> This is the first fanfic I've written in literal years, so I don't know how long it'll end up being. I hope someone enjoys it!

There are nights we want to lose. Nights when our sense of time falls away and we are victims to the impossibilities of our brain as they’re presented to us in the flesh. They are undeniable, but we deny them anyway. We try to lose them in the elaborate menagerie of our youth, to tuck them between everything that is normal until the memory is so dulled we are almost able to leave it behind. Almost able to forget.

Almost.

This is the word that makes Adam Parrish’s hands clench into fists.

The night he wants to forget is the same one he will never be able to lose. No matter how many insignificant memories he piles on top of it. His head is full of images of work, of going from one job to the next, of Aglionby, of doing homework. It is monotonous and consistent and that is the problem, because monotony is the easiest thing to cut through. All it takes is one extraordinary moment to break everything apart. For Adam Parrish, that one extraordinary moment was Ronan Lynch.

It feels like so long since Adam has been in his father’s trailer, so long since he’s been in his old closet of a bedroom. Back when getting hit was the same as going home. Back when people like Gansey thought he needed to be _protected_ —oh, that word made him nauseous. Possibly because it made him feel as weak as he did after every punch, possibly because it was true. His mother certainly never did anything. The tiny, rational part of his brain knew he should have gotten out so much sooner than he had. Opportunities were there. It was his pride that kept him from ever taking them. Ultimately, it was his pride that kept getting him hit. If there was one thing Adam was good at, it was blaming himself.

He used to show up at Monmouth Manufacturing with new bruises in different places every few days. Gansey and Ronan didn’t always mention them, but he saw their lectures in their eyes when they looked at him. How Gansey’s hung, full of help he knew Adam would never accept, and how Ronan’s narrowed, sharp with anger. It was not a secret that Ronan Lynch hated Robert Parrish. In those days, when Ronan scrutinized him and his bruises, Adam would see words filling his mouth.

Words that went uncharacteristically unsaid, until one night.

— — — — — — — —

His father had hit him hard enough to smack his face against the wall; his lip was busted, his cheekbone bruised dark. Gansey shook his head when he saw it illuminated by the dim light inside of the Pig.

“Jesus, Adam,” he hissed, his held tilting to see the breath of the damage.

Adam turned away. “Just drive.”

“I wish you’d just _consider_ —”

“No.”

“But Adam, I—”

“ _Drive_ , or I’m going back inside.”

Gansey stared at him a moment longer, his mouth hanging open. Adam waited for him to close it and turn away before climbing into the back seat beside Blue, who was decidedly looking down at her hands.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

They were quiet. Even the hideous and wonderful roar of the Pig felt like white noise after spending so many hours crammed into the backseat.  
Adam cleared his throat. “Where’s Ronan?”

Gansey’s entire body lifted with the change of subject, but his face didn't hold the same enthusiasm. “He locked himself into his bedroom immediately after classes.”

Blue asked, “What’s he sulking about now?”

“Lord knows. He didn’t say a word to me.”

The two of them dissolved into a small conversation with an ease that stung Adam, just a little. He thought he had an idea why Ronan was acting that way, but he didn’t share it. It sounded vain. _He doesn’t want to see me_. Every time they’d crossed paths at Aglionby, Ronan’s gaze had been sharp. He was angry with him, and Adam understood. He was angry at himself, too.

They pulled up outside of Monmouth Manufacturing a few minutes later. Adam was barely aware any time had passed. Gansey held up a finger to the two of them and climbed out of the car.

He shouted up at the window. "Ronan, if you're done with whatever it is you're doing, we would love it if you'd join us!"

There is nothing, and then the window opens. Gansey's grin spread and he started to say something else, until Ronan stuck only his hand to give them all the bird.

"Honestly, Ronan," Gansey sighed, shaking his head.

The hand was withdrawn. For a moment, Adam thought he might be coming down. Then he shouted, " _Parrish_!"

Adam cringed at the way his name cut through the air. He cracked open the door. "What do you want, Lynch?"

"I have _words_ for you.”

Adam looked to Gansey for some kind of hint to what awaited him upstairs, but he was only met with a shrug. “We’ll wait for you here,” he offered.  
With a sigh, Adam shook his head and got to his feet. “No, go on. I don’t know how long he’ll take.”

There was never a way to know with people like Ronan Lynch. He kept his words short so much of the time, giving only what absolutely had to be given, but every so often, he would let open the flood gates. Adam could be upstairs for five minutes before Ronan stormed out and left him wishing Gansey _had_ waited, or they could be up there for hours.

 _Might as well get it over with_.

He flashed an awkward half-expression to Blue and climbed out of the Pig. He felt Gansey watching him until the door was closed and he couldn’t anymore. About a minute later, the Camaro rumbled out of the parking lot. Adam was standing with his back to the door. He couldn’t decide if he was looking for courage or patience, or some combination of the two. At the very least, he tried to find his confidence somewhere on the staircase.

Ronan was standing in his own doorway feeding something small to Chainsaw as she perched on his shoulder. He didn't say anything. Really, he hardly acknowledged that Adam was there at all. They were quiet for too long.

“Well?” Adam urged, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. Ronan didn’t respond. “What do you need to say?”

Finally, Ronan directed his gaze toward him. He made a show of leaning to the side to look at the bruise on his face. “Just how long do you plan on letting that bastard keep doing that?”

Adam withered in the wake of his stare, for only for a moment. Only long enough for his eyes to fall to the floor. He didn’t come up to get a lecture from him—he got enough of that from Gansey already. All of it made his palms itch with frustration.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to start now, too,” he spat. His words were soft, but they were as thin and precise as a needle.

“Answer my question, Parrish.”

There was a flutter of wings as Chainsaw retreated into Ronan’s bedroom, a rush of wind against the windows, the absent creak of a floorboard. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Noah was lingering around somewhere.

“I’ll get out on my own,” Adam said. “I don’t need you or Gansey to—”

Ronan had pounded the side of his fist against the doorframe. “Oh, just cut the _bullshit_. I’m so fucking sick of hearing about it.”

“Well I’m sick of hearing Gansey talk about how easy it would be if I came here. It doesn’t mean anything if it’s easy.”

“It really won’t mean anything if you’re _dead_ , Parrish.” Somehow, Ronan had crossed the room without Adam hearing him move. “When are you going to get that? One of these days, he’s going to _kill_ you. Then nothing you do will be mean jack shit.”

“I know,” Adam said. His voice faded away before the word came to an end.

Robert Parrish was always escalating, always finding new things to throw him into. Doorknobs and faucets, cabinets and counters. It was only a matter of time before he thought of the butcher block, or he found the gun that Adam hid under hit mattress. He was walking on such a thin line already, but he didn’t want to be anyone’s battered charity case. He _wouldn’t_.

He said, “I’ll be fine.”

Ronan scoffed. “That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. You can’t promise me that.”

“Why do I need to promise _you_ anything?”

It was quickly apparent that Ronan hadn’t meant to say that. Not with that exact combination of words, not with that particular inflection. He took a step back and his gaze faltered. He had given something away with those mistakes, and he didn’t want Adam to know what it was.

“Whatever, Parrish. Do what you want.”


	2. Sleep Paralysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easier when people don't matter, but you don't get to pick who you care about.

Ronan Lynch was breaking, and Adam Parrish was the one with the battering ram.

Every touch of their legs was a silent, screaming confession that no one else ever seemed to be able to hear, and every glance was a risk. Over and over, though, he realized that it was a risk that he was willing to take. Seeing the way Adam’s sunken eyes sloped into strange, prominent cheekbones, and how those jutted into an impossibly straight jaw—it drove him mad. But not seeing it drove him even more mad. 

Too often, when he saw those curiously beautiful lines, they were stained with bruises or speckled with scratches. He’d come to associate Adam Parrish with blood and vessels and hurt. It made his insides sharpen and puncture each other when he thought about it too much. The thing with bruises, though, was that he couldn’t just stop seeing them. Not until they were gone. He could dream up as many Adams as he wanted, but eventually all of them were damaged. They always turned into nightmares before he had a chance to wake up. There were days when he real Adam looked just as awful, and he found himself wishing he could wake up from that too. No matter how often Adam climbed into the Pig with all that hurt on his body, Ronan never got used to it.

And yet, it wasn’t until _that_ day, when Adam walked into class with another purpled cheek and another split lip, that something inside of Ronan snapped. They were the most common and far from the worst of the injuries he’d sustained over the years. There have been fractured ribs and nearly broken arms, but it was _that_ that drops the proverbial straw onto Ronan Lynch’s back. This was what broke him.

He spent the rest of the day boiling over with words he wasn’t sure should ever make it to Adam’s ears. He wanted to come up with the perfect arrangement, to convince Adam to get the hell out of that trailer and away from Robert Parrish. It seemed like a task he was worthy of—he was better with these kinds of things than Gansey was. In theory, at least. Ronan had built up an endless list of don’ts after watching him fail countless times. Adam needed to understand that there was pride in surviving, not in forcing the people who cared about him to watch him crumble.

Eventually, there would be nothing left.

When he called Adam into Monmouth Manufacturing, he thought he had his speech all worked out.He didn’t bat an eye when the door open, or when Adam lingered downstairs. Only then, Adam came up, and Ronan saw those bruises, and they broke him all over again. None of his words were coming the way he’d planned them. They were rough and angry and forceful—all the things that Adam would push away from. All the approaches that had never worked before. 

“Do what I _want_?” Adam said. His feet were planted firmly on the ground, his fingers curled into fists. Then he falters. “I _am_ doing what I want. You just don’t agree with me.”

Ronan was getting angry. Not the false anger that he put up to shield himself, but _real_ angry. The kind that made his fists shake and his veins throb. Adam either didn’t care what happened to himself, or he was refusing to look at the big picture. When Ronan told him that Robert Parrish was going to end up hurting him in a way he couldn’t come back from, he meant it. If Adam didn’t get out soon, he never would.  

“Do you really not see what you’re doing?” Ronan spat. “Do you even care?”

Adam’s temper seemed to stall, and his eyes darted to the side. “What are you talking about, Ronan?”

“Did you ever stop to think about why Gansey asks you to come here? Really think about it.” Not everyone looked for control the way Robert Parrish did. Not everyone was trying to hurt. Ronan had a hard time accepting this, but he wanted it for Adam. Even if those words couldn’t comfort him, he wanted Adam to believe them. “Not everyone is your father.”

Adam takes a step back to angle himself away from the glassy stare Ronan is giving him. “I know that.”

“Do you? Because it doesn’t seem like it when we take you home every night. Just think—” He pauses. “Just think how Blue feels. Seeing you like that.”

_Blue_. Every time he thought of her, he was filled to the brim with a disgusting jealousy. Ronan didn’t like to admit that people could have that much control over his emotions, so he didn’t, but that didn’t change things. Blue would still get to hold Adam’s hand and Ronan would still feel sore over it. A small part of him wished that it would mean the same if he told him _he_ was the one he was hurting.

“I don’t want her to worry.”

Ronan said, “Then stop acting like a child,” and regretted it almost immediately.

Adam’s gaze turned to stone; the line between his brows was almost black and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “ _Fuck_ you, Lynch.”

The words spat out of his mouth like acid, burning their way into Ronan’s flesh. He had watched Adam seethe after having conversations like this with Gansey so many times he’d lost count. They were strange around each other for hours or days or weeks every time. So when Adam whipped his body toward the door, a jolt went through his chest. _Stop him. Don’t let him leave like this._ Ronan could prevent, when he wanted to, but he didn’t chase. If Adam walked out, that would be it. 

Long strides got him to the door in time to slam the door shut at the same moment that Adam opened it. “Would you just hold up a second?”

“Why should I? So you can tell me I have no idea what I’m doing? So you can tell me I’m stupid?”

“Goddamn it Adam, that’s not what I’m _saying_.”

“I don’t care what you’re saying. I don’t want to hear it.”

Adam reached for the doorknob again, looking like he was ready to tear the whole thing right off the hinges. Ronan caught his wrist before he even had a chance. The heat of the moment tied all of his thoughts into one, unintelligible mass of would-be statements. All he could do was stare at him; both of them had stopped moving. Ronan Lynch didn’t touch people like this. He didn’t look at them with anything other than malice or amusement. But Adam Parrish wasn’t people.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said after far too long.

For once, his words had no bite and they did not sear. If anyone cared enough to listen closely, they might have heard the slightest hint of a plead. 


	3. Possibilities

Unfortunately for Ronan, Adam Parrish was the only one around, and he cared enough to do more than listen. He kept that part of himself compacted into tiny, hidden corners of his mind, but that never stopped them from seeping through the edges. Sometimes it made it difficult to be near him, and other times it nearly impossible to be away. The strength of it scared him now more than ever, because he needed to get away and there was no escaping. Ronan’s fingers formed a vice around his bony wrist, trapping it in mid-air only inches away from the rusted silver doorknob. Seconds away from freedom.

 Finally, he asked, “What’s this actually about?”

The words seemed to fill up the little bit of space between them, but he couldn’t tell if they were pushing them apart or pulling them closer. Ronan said nothing to give it away. He didn't move, didn’t twitch. Adam wanted to tear his hand away and demand an answer, but he worried one of those sharp fingers may sever it right off. So he waited, though he had no way to know just what he would be waiting for.

It felt like an eternity passed before Ronan’s grip changed. The barbed tips of his fingers seemed to retract and the urgency fell away a beat before his hand did. “I don’t know anymore.”

Adam turned his head away. “So now I’m a lost cause,” he stated. Before he knew what was happening, Ronan’s arm was across his chest and he was being pressed against the door.

“THE ONLY ONE SAYING THAT IS _YOU,_ ” Ronan snarled, pressing harder against his sternum.

For too long, Adam was frozen in place because it wasn’t Ronan standing in front of him anymore, but Robert Parrish. He could see his thick, threatening arms and smell the beer in his breath. Adam’s brain had every detail memorized so perfectly that he could be there, even when he wasn’t. The shift was enough to send a cold sweat spreading across his skin, and the fear in his eyes was enough for Ronan to throw himself off of him. He stumbled away, palms frantically pressing against his temples. Adam didn’t budge.

“It’s always the same,” he muttered. “Everyone’s the same.”

Ronan’s head lulled between his shoulders and frustration pulled at the muscles in his neck. “Because you won’t _let_ anyone else do any differently. If you’d just—I would—”

An exasperated sigh sliced his words in two before he could finish. Adam looked up.

“You’d _what_?” he pressed. “You’ve come this far. You might as well finish.”

Ronan pressed his forehead against the wall. Whatever he was struggling with was written all over his body, but it wasn’t a language Adam could translate. He’d never been able to, much as he tried. The only person that seemed to even come close was Gansey. A far-away part of him wished he were there to mediate. Of course, if he were, it was likely that Adam would then be the one in a rage. 

Then Ronan said, “I’d be different.”

He was still leaning against the wall, but he’d turned his head so that one eye could peak past his fist. Adam never knew what to do when the other boy looked at him like that—like he was looking past him. Or through him. It was the only time that heever felt completely and totally transparent.

“Different how?” he asked, his words tentative.

Ronan’s gaze fell to nothing in particular and his eyes grew distant. Adam kept waiting for him to shove away from the wall or yell again or do _anything_ other than stand there. The stagnancy was uncharacteristic and it made the hairs on his neck stand on end. He wanted to press further, to say his name and try to drag the answer out of him, but even his breath felt too loud.

Then Ronan was moving.

Entire seconds passed before Adam realized it was toward him. Broken instincts made him close his eyes and tighten his muscles in defense. When the only thing he felt was fingers on his shoulder, he looked up. He’d never seen Ronan from that close before; he could see the lines beneath his eyes and a spot of discolored skin in the crease of his nose—likely a scar from a night horror.

Finally, Ronan asked, “Are you sure you want the answer?”

Without the question Adam would have continued to push, but it’s presence made him hesitate. It sounded like a warning and, coming from Ronan, he didn’t know what that could mean. Ronan Lynch never cushioned a blow—he delivered it at full force, just to see if the pressure could be withstood. But here he was, putting up this barrier between Adam and the turbulent thoughts in his head, without any explanation. It peaked his curiosity just as much as his fear. 

“Yes.”

The fingers Ronan has stationed at Adam’s shoulder went sharp, the calloused tips of them grating against his skin like rock against wood. He was sure to crack and splinter under a touch like that when it came with such a stony gaze. When the slow trajectory of his hand came to a stop, Ronan’s palm was pressing against Adam’s sternum. The gesture was strange; intrusive and possessive, as if he planned to rip his heart from his chest and keep it for his very own. And yet, he had not looked at him once. His eyes had traced lines Adam couldn’t see and they had followed his hand as he moved it, but he had avoided his face. Adam drew in breath to say his name. He thought he might be able to make some sense of this moment they were in if he could see how Ronan was feeling. At the same moment that he conjured the words in his throat, though, Ronan moved forward. 


	4. Knife Going In

All the questions that Ronan had been asking himself for months stood only inches away from him, solid and imploring and so disarmingly beautiful beneath his granite hands. He was nothing like Gansey—he didn’t know how to have beautiful things. He didn’t know how to hold them without scratching them, how to keep them without locking them away from the beast that he was. Someone as beautiful as Adam Parrish could never belong to him. Truthfully, Ronan wasn’t sure someone like Adam could ever be owned by anyone at all.

He was only standing close then because Ronan had forced himself into that space, and he only stayed because Ronan held him there. If he let go, Adam would tear out of the room, out of Monmouth Manufacturing and out of his life. Likely forever, if things really ended there. Adam Parrish would remain an unanswered question that he would try to dream up explanations for until he’d drained every ounce of power from every ley line he could find, and that would just be the way that it was. Perhaps it was the better resolution. That was what he told himself, but his body did not comply. Instead, his hand had conformed to the shape of Adam’s shoulder, memorized where it curved and where it poked. The knowledge filled a spot in his brain that he had never noticed before. Now, the unoccupied space was demanding to be filled. His flinty hand scraped over the sharper parts of Adam, filing down and carving out every detail as if he were trying to see a statue in the dark. He only stopped when the line of his collarbone lead him dangerously close to his neck. That was where things would go wrong, because Ronan didn’t know how to be soft.

It was then that he felt the vibrations of a word building up in Adam.

The thought filled him with panic—if he spoke now, if he said the wrong thing, this moment Ronan had been cultivating would end and getting there had already taken so long. He wasn’t sure he could bring it back if he lost it now. Suddenly, that idea of the future he’d thought of before sparked a selfish pain in his chest. Selfish, because this was his question and his alone. There was nothing perilous about it for Adam. Out of everyone, he was the one most likely to walk away and never look back. He could push it all aside and move on because that was how he’d lived his entire life, while Ronan had everything torn from his bloody fingers. At the very least, he needed a definitive answer this time. If he knew exactly where they stood if or when Adam decided to walk away, he thought he could let him go.

All of those thoughts surged through his mind in a matter of seconds, bringing him to a decision that would surely be the wrong one. There was no reason that leaning in closer would fix things and no way that touching his lips to a mouth that had ached for Blue Sargent would yield anything but disaster.

— — — — — — — —

There are nights we want to lose. Nights when we are no longer capable of holding back all the questions we’ve been asking ourselves, when we’re too fed up of denying the undeniable. We lay ourselves out and slice open our chests so that the people that matter may pick through everything we’ve hidden. Sometimes they like what they find. They leave it nestled safely in its place so that it may continue to grow and it becomes the thing they like the most.

In the case of Adam Parrish, he found a version of himself in Ronan Lynch—glossy and somehow preserved within all that mess. He turned it over in his hands, examined all the fine details. It revealed all the compliments that had been disguised as silence and all the hateful words that Ronan never meant, and it scared him. Just like Ronan had always thought it would. When Adam walked away, he told himself that it would be better this way. That eventually, this would only be another shadow in one of his dark corners. A memory that he would almost able to forget.

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that certainly went in a direction that I was not expecting.


End file.
